A former Belgian bishop at the center of one of the Roman Catholic church’s biggest pedophile scandals said Thursday that he had abused two nephews and insisted he had no plans to abandon the priesthood.

[..]

Earlier this week, the Vatican used its new rules to crack down on sex abuse by high-ranking churchmen by ordering Vangheluwe to no longer work as a priest while officials determine his punishment.

Over the weekend, Belgian bishops reported that Vangheluwe had merely been sent outside the country for spiritual and psychological counseling.

“Over the weekend, Belgian bishops reported that Vangheluwe had merely been sent outside the country for spiritual and psychological counseling.”

Isn’t that another way of saying “We have removed him from your jurisdiction so he can’t be prosecuted”?

Jan-Mark on
April 17th, 2011 at 23:13:

Unfortunately, he can’t be prosecuted because it happened too long ago. The Belgian judicial system is famous for delaying child abuse cases until they are barred. I mean that literally, they keep postponing the first hearing until there is no case left. Imagine being a parent trying for many years to get your case heard, until finally the case is thrown out because it was too long ago…

On February 16, Borders Group Inc. (BGP) filed for Chapter 11 protection and announced it would close about 30% of its stores nationwide in the coming weeks (In re Borders Group Inc., 11-10614, U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York). Borders is/was currently the second-largest book chain after Barnes & Noble Inc. (BKS),

Six thousand people – 6,000 – out of work.

[..]

Meanwhile, the President and CEO is asking for $8.3 million in executive bonuses (including nearly $1.7 million for himself).

Well, if they didnt give him the bonus he might leave and ruin another company!

You say he is asking for $8.3M. Have they given it to them yet? If not, they probably will, and until I hear otherwise, that’s probably the case… More for the rich. Regarding the 6000, to quote/paraphrase Marie Antoinette (probably incorrectly, according to the Wikipedia), if they have no bread, let them eat cake!

lol…the company is now farked and the people at the top haven’t managed to work out a plan to avoid this mess. So, they’ll clearly need some kind of bonus just to keep their executives from jumping ship. You’d better count the spoons when these guys do finally go.

When Nortel went belly up the sad news is that 300 former employees on disability benefits lost all of their income and 19,500 pensioners and laid-off employees lost a large percentage of their pensions. This after the company had been systematically looted by waves of “top executives” who added “value” to the company.

Newly released Federal Aviation Administration documents and audiotapes shed a scary new light on a bizarre incident late last year during which U.S. Senator James Inhofe landed his Cessna on a closed runway at a south Texas airport, scattering construction workers who ran for their lives as the politician’s plane hopscotched over them and six vehicles.

[..]

Boyd also said that Inhofe showed little contrition following the close call. “He come over here and started being like, ‘What the hell is this? I was supposed to have unlimited airspace.’”

“In a recorded conversation with Lee Williams, an FAA quality assurance specialist, airport manager Marshall Reece tore into Inhofe’s piloting. “I’ve got over 50 years flying, three tours of Vietnam,” Reece said, “and I can assure you I have never seen such a reckless disregard for human life in my life.” He then added, “Something needs to be done. This guy is famous for these violations.””

Sounds very much like the textbook description of a sociopath: Lack of remorse or empathy for other humans, tendency to violate boundaries and rights of other people, irresponsible behaviour, disregard for other peoples safety, expressions of aggression and verbal abuse; inadequate control of anger and temper.

Using the tragedy in Christchurch as a means to advance the corporate agenda of offshore entertainment giants is shameful, to say the least. It’s hard to imagine the depravity at work in the mind of the big content lobbyist who decided that hitching a ride on emergency legislation to address the horrific consequences of the Christchurch quake was a good idea.

Juan E. Mendez, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, said his request for a private interview with Manning was denied by the Defense Department on Friday. Instead, he has been told that any visit must be supervised.

Mendez has been seeking to determine whether Manning’s confinement at a military brig at Quantico amounts to torture, following complaints about his treatment and an incident in which the private was forced to strip in his cell at night and sleep without clothing.

“My request . . . is not onerous: for my part, a monitored conversation would not comply with the practices that my mandate applies in every country and detention center visited,” Mendez said in a statement Monday, noting that at least 18 countries have allowed unmonitored interviews.

Since taking office in January, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has stripped public workers of their collective bargaining rights, proposed wage cuts to local government employees, and insisted that his “state is broke” and that its public workers are overpaid. But Walker applies a different standard to himself.

Today, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reveals that Walker is using state funds to pay more than $81,500 a year to the 26-year-old son of a major campaign donor with no college degree and two drunken-driving convictions.

Despite having almost no management experience, UW Madison college dropout Brian Deschane now oversees state environmental and regulatory issues and manages dozens of Commerce Department employees. After only two months on the job, Deschane has already received a 26 percent pay raise and a promotion.

Transocean Ltd. had its "best year in safety performance" despite the explosion of its Deepwater Horizon rig that left 11 dead and oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico, the world’s largest offshore-rig company said in a securities filing Friday.

Accordingly, Transocean’s executives received two-thirds of their target safety bonus. Safety accounts for 25% of the equation that determines the yearly cash bonuses, along with financial factors including new rig contracts.

General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

All these poor, poor corporations, being driven out of business by oppressive tax schemes. Thank goodness there’s a whole raft of business-friendly politicians finally installed in office who can give them the tax breaks they so desperately need to get the economy back on track!

3.2 billion = 64,000 50k/yr jobs.

Tell GE to take a hike, hire 64,000 people to build infrastructure, and get some of that 50k back in income taxes.

Out of curiosity–when subsidiaries of GE generate profits on legitimate (!) business in other countries, why should that get taxed in the US? (i.e. I’m not talking about artificial offshoring tactics here.)

Actually, that’s a very useless question. If I answer that, for example, the location of the headquarters is the place that matters, you get one kind of discussion. If I say foreign subsidiaries shouldn’t be taxed in the US, we’ll get into a whole off-shoring discussion in one form or anther anyway.

Here’s the point: You can argue that it’s not GE’s fault that US tax laws (and those in many other countries) are so full of loopholes, and you’d be ignoring it’s companies like GE that often draft the laws themselves and hand them to lobbyists or politicians. You can argue it’s not GE’s fault that our corrupt public officials are so easily (and legally) bribed. Or, you can argue that with their buying power, it is partly their fault.

They are adhering to the letter of the law and obliterating the spirit of the law. It is a giant fuck you to every tax-paying citizen of every country.

The problem isn’t that corporations will take advantage of poor regulation, hazy tax law, and opportunities to corrupt elected officials; the problem is that these opportunities exist in the first place.

Here’s the question you should ask: how do you get rid of the opportunities?

And that’s not easy. For example.. you could say that Americans can vote for politicians who favor serious campaign finance reform. But that’s “socialism”. And where did that come from? Is GE a media company? It’s the unions I tell ya. Them evil unions!

We really need the guy who changes the Google search algorithm each week to go to work for the US Treasury dept to change the corporate tax code on a yearly basis until it becomes cost prohibitive for corporations to pay tax lawyers to skirt the system. Google has been successful up until now because content farmers who spam search results find it futile to expend the energy to game Google’s system only to find the next day the game has changed. We need to apply this same strategy to foil those who are looking to game the US (and any other) tax code. Once that works, get that bastard to do the same thing with campaign finance and the SEC.

‘That GE can almost set its own tax rate shows how very much we need reform,’ said Rep. Lloyd Doggett. ‘Our tax system should encourage job creation and investment in America and end these tax incentives for exporting jobs and dodging responsibility for the cost of securing our country.’

It was significant losses at GE Capital in the financial crisis, not “tax avoidance” strategies, that reduced General Electric’s 2010 overall tax rate below historic levels.

Without these financial crisis losses at GE Capital, G.E.’s tax rate would have been near the average of other multinational corporations. Our tax rate will return to more normal levels this year as GE Capital recovers from the financial crisis. In short, when you lose money, you don’t pay taxes, and that’s what happened at GE Capital.

The Times points out that G.E.’s job numbers in the United States are down over the past decade, but does not provide the context: G.E.’s employment in the United States has increased in this period, apart from the sale of businesses. Those jobs weren’t eliminated; they moved to other companies.

Rep. Christopher Lee is a married Republican congressman serving the 26th District of New York. But when he trolls Craigslist’s "Women Seeking Men" forum, he’s Christopher Lee, "divorced" "lobbyist" and "fit fun classy guy." One object of his flirtation told us her story.

The emails aren’t especially interesting, but they point to Rep. Lee’s hypocrisy, given his anti-woman, anti-gay voting record.

Miss Nebraska, Teresa Scanlan, became champion of the 2011 Miss America pageant tonight. She has deep thoughts on foreign policy and radical transparency.

She won after strutting in a black bikini and a white evening gown, playing “White Water Chopped Sticks” on piano and telling the audience that when it comes to the website Wikileaks, security should come before public access to government information.

“You know when it came to that situation, it was actually based on espionage, and when it comes to the security of our nation, we have to focus on security first and then people’s right to know, because it’s so important that everybody who’s in our borders is safe and so we can’t let things like that happen, and they must be handled properly,” she said.

"We received a copy of the YouTube video showing the quantity of liquid served in the 16 oz. beer cup is the same quantity that fits into the 20 oz. beer cup. This is the first time we have been alerted to this fact. Upon our internal investigation this afternoon, we discovered the cups that are marked 16 oz. hold 20 oz. of liquid. Fans who purchased a 16 oz. beer actually received 20 oz. of beer for the 16 oz. price. Fans that purchased the 20 oz. beer received the amount they purchased. We are working with Levy Restaurants to follow up with the cup vendor about the measurement and to determine how long this has been occurring at Qwest Field. We are determined to find a solution as quickly as possible. In the meantime, we will serve domestic beer in the 20 oz. cup at tomorrow’s playoff game to ensure all fans receive the amount they purchase, and we will charge the 16 oz. price."

In a rather astounding example of burying the lede, the Washington Post writes today about how many airports are considering using private contractors, instead of the TSA, to handle airport security. Then the Post interviews the incoming House Transportation chairman, who trashes the TSA and is pushing airports to switch to the private contractors.

Rep. John L. Mica (R-Fla.), the incoming chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has written to 200 of the nation’s largest airports, urging them to consider switching to private companies.

The TSA was “never intended to be an army of 67,000 employees,” he said.

“If you look at [the TSA’s] performance, have they ever stopped a terrorist? Anyone can get through,” Mica said in an interview. “We’ve been very lucky, very fortunate. TSA should focus on its mission: setting up the protocol, adapting to the changing threats and gathering intelligence.”

What the Post doesn’t tell you, until the end of the story, is that one of the big private contractors is in the House Transportation chairman’s own district.

Covenant, based in Mica’s home district in northeastern coastal Florida, has airport screening contracts in Sioux Falls, S.D., Tupelo, Miss., and seven small airports in northern and eastern Montana. Its deal at San Francisco International is by far its largest. Covenant employs nearly 1,100 people in the bay area, who make up nearly all of its 1,150 workers. The last four-year contract, from 2006 to 2010, totaled $314 million. A new contract has been put out for competitive bids. Meanwhile, Covenant is operating on a two-month contract ending in February.

Um, kind of a relevant fact that deserves to be highlighted a tad earlier.

On the first of the month food stamp debit cards are automatically refilled with benefit money from the government. On an average night between midnight and 3 a.m., a store could bring in about $3000. On the first of the month that number is 10 times as much with almost everyone using food stamps.

Hard times can be good times — for the aggressively avaricious. Where others see pain, they see opportunity. In desperation, they delight. The grimmer the economic outlook, the more ghastly their grabbing.

And who grabbed the most outrageously in 2010? We offer below our annual take on America’s ten greediest of the year.

Earlier this week, we noted how the owners of the various hiphop blogs and Torrent-Finder, the torrent search engine, that were seized by Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) group still hadn’t been provided the details on why their domains were seized. However, that’s no longer the case. A partial affidavit and the seizure warrant for those sites has been released, and it highlights how ridiculously clueless Homeland Security is on this issue (you can read the whole thing at the bottom of this post). What’s troubling isn’t just that the folks who made the decision to seize these domain names don’t seem to know what they’re talking about, but that they seem to have relied almost exclusively on the MPAA for their (lack of) knowledge on the subject at hand.

PayPal has permanently restricted the account used by WikiLeaks due to a violation of the PayPal Acceptable Use Policy, which states that our payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity. We’ve notified the account holder of this action.

Translation: Bank of America knows they’re next in line with Wikileaks, and threatened us to stop all transactions with us, and we caved immediately.

After a week of waiting in line, rotating shifts and Thanksgiving Day in a Best Buy parking lot, the ‘First Family of Black Friday’ finally reached the inside of the store.

Tina Thain and Lorie Davenport were the first in line outside the Best Buy near Tyrone Square Mall in St. Petersburg. Lined up on November 17, Thain and Davenport, were determined to be the first to get their hands on items.

Not to sound too cynical or sarcastic about this, but John McCain has basically declared that, if Obama thinks something is a fair, reasonable, or good idea, then he’s opposed to it on the sheer basis of the fact that Obama likes it.

For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”

There are a couple hundred people in dog kennels in Cuba right now who can attest about the U.S. Government not really giving a shit about fact-checking whether or not someone’s actually a member of the Taliban.

You don’t think it’s appropriate that your students have the ability to form independent thoughts? You don’t think it’s appropriate that your students feel that way about a policy which bars them from attending an event with their peers because their partners don’t have a penis?

Christine O’Donnell, the surprise Tea Party-backed Senate candidate in Delaware, threatened to sue a local radio station if it did not turn over a videotape of an interview it conducted with her.

O’Donnell’s campaign later apologized to the station for the threat, WDEL reports.

O’Donnell appeared on WDEL’s "The Rick Jensen Show" Tuesday, during which she fielded several questions from listeners and the host. Upon the conclusion of the interview, an O’Donnell aide demanded video of the interview be turned over to the campaign and destroyed because such videotaping had not been previously approved.

It was then, according to WDEL, that O’Donnell herself threatened to sue the station if it did not comply with the request. WDEL also says it later fielded a phone call from O’Donnell campaign manager Matt Moran, who threatened to "crush" the station with a lawsuit if it did not agree to turn over the tape.

WDEL’s attorney was soon involved and told the campaign there was nothing illegal about videotaping the interview for later use on the station’s website and added that such action is protected by the First Amendment.

Upon further investigation, WDEL says O’Donnell’s attorney called the station to apologize for the uproar and threat of litigation.

Tim Profitt — the former Rand Paul volunteer who stomped on the head of a MoveOn activist — told told local CBS station WKYT that he wants an apology from the woman he stomped and that she started the whole thing.

"I don’t think it’s that big of a deal," Profitt said. "I would like for her to apologize to me to be honest with you."

As the progressive Blue Virgina blog reported Monday — and I independently confirmed from one of the recipients Tuesday — Virginia Beach Republican Party chair Dave Bartholomew forwarded a racist email comparing African Americans to dogs. The email, subject line "my, dog," consists of a racist parable about African Americans and welfare. In the first 24 hours since the email came to light, Democrats condemned Bartholomew and he resigned his position with the Republican Party.

[..]

The e-mail was dated March 15 and sent from the address that Bartholomew uses as party chairman. Bartholomew forwarded it without reading the contents when “he was first getting familiar with the Internet,” Byler said.

Well, I guess you’re pretty familiar with the Internet now!

He says he’s not a racist. He not only has black friends, he calls them man’s best friend!

In the winter of 2009, Georgia state legislator Rep. Calvin Hill (R-Canton) led a high-profile campaign against the teaching of public university courses that dealt with sexual health and related topics. Hill was joined by a small cadre of other conservatives who sought to end the teaching of courses dealing with topics such as male prostitution and gay history, and some of his acolytes even called for firing professors who taught these courses. Hill even appeared on CNN and boasted about an award he received for leading the battle to shut down courses dealing with sexuality. “Our public colleges are not the place for our young adults and future leaders to experiment and experience these types of sexually explicit behavior,” Hill said at the time.

Now, the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s Jim Galloway reports that, while Hill may think that sex is too hot of a topic for the young adult students at public colleges in the state to handle, he’s perfectly fine making a buck off it. Galloway writes that Hill’s Democratic opponent, Stephanie Webb, has discovered that the company Hill serves as CFO of, Gila Distributing, sells numerous sex gadgets and gay pride paraphernalia through the company. These products include “stress relievers” in the shape of male sex organs and Gay Pride flag lapel pins.